S/PLI/T: How does the idea of the byproduct fit into your work?Satpreet Kahlon: I’ve been playing around with this idea of industrial waste materials for a while, combining them with methods that I know – domestic craft – and it’s come to a head since I moved into the Bemis Building because it’s such an industrial area. I go on walks everyday and collect stuff I think is interesting, and have been using those things without thinking too much about it. When I put the three works for this show together I saw that they were more sterile than my other works, which tend to be more narrative, and I realized that my work is about transformation and this kind of incidental transformation that happens when I’m doing the repetitive processes that come naturally to me. By putting them in this new context of industrial material instead of domestic craft material I ended up with a byproduct that was a result of two unrelated systems intersecting. It’s kind of indicative of my own experience. My parents moved here from India they were thinking about a lot of things, like more opportunity for me and my siblings, more opportunities for themselves, more stability. Where my parents grew up and where I was born in India, we lived really close to the border of Pakistan so there were a lot of terrorist attacks happening in that area – it’s how one of my uncles died. There was a lot of unrest in that area and my parents were thinking about all of these direct improvements when they decided to immigrate, but they didn’t consider that myself and my siblings would be a byproduct of this move – caught at the intersection of their being Punjabi Indian and our experiences growing up in the United States. It wasn’t a purposeful situation, it was a result of my parents looking for opportunity and safety in a country that requires assimilation. I’m interested in how “byproduct” can be a situation or experience as well as a material and how that can translate into material language.

S/: You bring up the aspect of the word byproduct that is inherently accidental – does chance play into your process?SK: Yes, with all of my pieces. Especially the first couple pieces in a new body of work – each new body of work is started after the completion of another and usually I just need to take a break from what I was doing before. I start with the small acts and something then happens in those actions that is purely by accident. For me the process is more meditative – the result is often surprising.

S/: Going back to your words about collecting materials on walks, and working between the domestic and industrial, how do you select the particular materials you work with? Do you communicate meaning through material?SK: So to talk about the materials in this show – I always have weaving yarn in my studio as a go-to. The black weaving bamboo yarn in a work for this show is really similar to what women use – how do I describe this? – so in Punjab we have really long hair that’s braided but for special events women will add more hair. It’s not meant to look real so women will use weaving yarn and braid it into the end of their hair to make it super long – the braid goes to their knees and it has ornamentation at the end of it – they’re called Brahmbia. It’s this really lavish display of femininity and celebration. When I went to a weaving yarn store six months ago I saw and felt this yarn that looked and moved like Brahmbia, and had to get it. Instead of using my hair, which is a literal reference, this is more of an abstracted cultural reference. So I was working with that and I received some scraps from a woman who works at a sign shop around here - eight of those circle grids - they’re 4x8 feet each and unavoidable, sitting in the corner of my studio. I was really drawn to the pattern of a repeating circle cut out.

S/: What is it a *byproduct* of?SK: I don’t know – the woman who gives them to me does administrative work, and isn’t actually involved in the sign-making so there is this added layer of mystery. They must have used a ton of those circles for something. There is a buoyancy to it and it feels almost alive on its own. I felt something could happen with it. From there I thought about these really basic industrial materials that I don’t really have a point of reference for, cinderblocks and raw wood. I avoid those materials but they’re a really big part of my life now – both in my work as a representation of western culture, and also through where I’m living. There are semi trucks coming through all the time because it’s the port of Seattle, and my dad drives a semi truck and has done that for a long time and his father drove a truck before him in India, and so I feel like it’s a part of my legacy. My dad used to go to these salt mines and load up his truck with tons of unprocessed salt. That is a part of my origin story, but I’m not personally familiar with or drawn to industrial materials and so coming to terms with, almost taking ownership of that aspect of my background is part of using those materials.

S/: You’re pretty vocal about different racial and gender and social issues. Does this tie into your art? Does it affect your motivation for making work, or do you use these issues more as conceptual fodder or subject matter in your work? How do you navigate between activism and art?SK: All of these social issues are just things I think about all the time, I can’t really avoid it even when I should just to give myself rest. I have a really strong sense of moral justice and if feels like this inherent moral obligation to speak out. Recently I did a more directly activist piece at the Alice, The Coalition, which was a departure for me.

S/: Tell us about that piece.SK: I had been the victim of a racist encounter in my building here and I was feeling really helpless and unseen and unheard - no matter what I said about race and gender, my opinion would be devalued because I would be seen as an angry brown woman. Later it was 2AM, I was laying in bed and couldn’t sleep and this name came to me: The Coalition of Docile and Agreeable Women of Color for the Propogation and Continuation of White Fragility. It was a question of ‘how do I force white people to confront how absurd and racist the things they to me?’. The racism is often not overt and obvious - it’s language that reveals implicit biases and ignorance that is racist and bigoted. So I sent a call out and asked women of color to send screen shots, or records of any text or communication they’ve received from a white person that was racist in the past few months. I compiled all of these things and envisioned this satirical organization where women of color had really internalized the white message and our standing as martyrs for the white community - really perceiving the white community as the one under attack and how can we help. If we ask for exactly what the white community is giving us anyway, does that make it absurd enough that white people can understand what they’re doing. So that was my first performative work, obviously blatant. It is very in your face and directly political. My work is usually about subtlety – and it’s not a subtle project. The fabric objects were kind of secondary to the main purpose. So it was a huge departure for me. I have a friend here in Seattle who always tells me - you don’t have to be one kind of artist and I think that’s true and it was important for me to do the coalition but in the future combining activism and art – I want to do it in ways that leave more room for interpretation. That might change but it’s how I feel right now.​S/: Who are some artists that are inspiring you right now? What are you reading or looking at?SK: I’m reading a lot! I’ll start with that because that’s easier. My partner got me a subscription to October – it’s a critical theory art journal that MIT publishes quarterly; a collection of essays dealing with, say, the difference between painting and sculpture and does sculpture end at its bounds or does it extend into the world because it’s not separate from space and space is everywhere, you know, heavy, dense stuff like that. I’ve been doing reading like that. I’ve been forcing myself to be smarter and I think that’s a good way to start. I’m also reading this book Bengali Harlem in which a man did research on the stories of South Asians who came to the states and weren’t doctors and engineers - working class people who really incorporated themselves into black and Hispanic neighborhoods and their narratives really aren’t documented. Because my family is working class I’ve thought about that - when people find out I’m Indian they often assume my parents are engineers or doctors but that’s not true at all. Generally I’m interested in poetic fiction writing, critical theory, and my own history thinking about these forgotten narratives.

As for artists - Doris Salcedo. She’s a Columbian artist who makes work that is highly conceptual and visceral but also narrative - you get the sense of story and soul in her work but it’s not kitschy or crafty. Also a Seattle-based artist Devita Ingram. She’s also a social activist and community builder - she has a very multifaceted identity - she makes space for her whole self in her art.